Benicia schools to get Google apps

BENICIA &GT;&GT; Public school students in this town can expect to be eventually using a suite of cloud-based applications.

"We wanted a single product for students and staff to work better together, from anywhere," said Ruben Fernandez, supervisor of technology and instruction for the Benicia Unified School District, during Thursday's school board meeting.

Fernandez gave a brief presentation on Google Apps, several online programs that include a storage drive, word processing and other features. Fernandez touted the system as one that increases collaboration across the district.

"The traditional barriers will be pulled down to working together," he said.

Trustee Peter Morgan warned Fernandez to consider policies and practices that clearly outline what users can store in the online drive, since extra storage would cost the district.

"It's too easy to store, and there's no consequences to the user," Morgan said.

Fernandez said the district will plan and do professional development before rolling out Google Apps.

Additionally, the board heard an update on the governor's revised budget proposal, released last week.

Though little has changed for schools, as new revenue is being directed to other state programs, trustees expressed concern at a proposal that would increase district's contributions to a state pension fund for teachers from 8.25 percent to 19.1 percent by 2020.

Employee's contributions would also rise from 8 percent now to 10.25 percent in 2020.